The Challenging Balance of Delegation to Your Team

I’m not sure if anyone else has a similar experience with their younger siblings, but my little sister used to always want to help out in the kitchen whenever I was baking something. I’d like to say I was always gracious about letting her step in and help, but the truth is, I wasn’t always the best at actually letting her contribute.

Sure, I’d invite her in, but ‘helping’ often meant sitting on a stool in the kitchen and watching me work. Occasionally she’d hand me a paper towel or fetch ingredients; sometimes she’d be lucky enough to measure out flour or crack an egg, but my perfectionist tendencies meant these moments were fleeting. If she took too long or made even a small mess, I’d quickly take over, relegating her to spectator status. I mean, I had been baking for years, so I knew I could bake these recipes faster, and with (significantly) less mess than my little sister could. I wanted her to learn how to bake and appreciate the joy of creating something delicious, but I lacked the patience and delegation skills to actually let her learn by doing.

Balancing Delegation of Tasks to Your Team

I think my fellow business owners can attest to how difficult delegating tasks to your team members can be. It’s not that you don’t trust them or feel like they’re incapable, it’s just that you know you can do most things faster because you have more experience. And if I can do something in 15 minutes, why would I ask a team member to do it when I know it’ll take them 30 minutes? Or there’s an amount of training that goes with handing off the task that you just aren’t prepared to do – not because it isn’t worth it, but because training someone in a new task takes time, and that may be time you feel like you don’t have.

On the flipside, sometimes some managers are a little too comfortable with delegation, and end up assigning their team members way more work than they could reasonably finish in the expected timeframe. Or tasks begin to be delegated to a team member without any training or guidance, leaving them to figure it out on their own.

You notice a team member who is a hard worker and is great at their job and you want to make full use of them, but end up overworking your teammate in the process or leaving them feeling lost and confused in their role.

There’s a delicate balance when it comes to team delegation, and it can often feel like you’re walking a tightrope. And most of the time, somewhere in the process of figuring it out us CEOs end up here:

So what’s the solution?

The trick is learning to:

1. Train and trust your team members (it’ll save you so much time later, I promise)
2. And capacity plan for your team.

Capacity planning is the process of learning how much work each of your team members can handle, based on how long certain tasks usually take them, and what their average daily capacity level is (more on how to do this is shared in this post). Then delegating an appropriate amount of tasks accordingly.

It can be a tricky skill to figure out, especially if it’s your first time hearing about it. Luckily, Upwell offers a practical template and training on team capacity planning in our shop. Check out the Team Capacity Planner & Masterclass in the Visionary Vault and get started today!